Monday morning headlines

Stocks open higher: The week starts off with the Dow shooting past the 9900 mark. Trading is expected to be light due to the Columbus Day holiday.

Local angle on Nobel laureate: Elinor Ostrom, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Economics, was born in 1933 in L.A. and got her PhD in Political Science from UCLA. Her experiences growing up during the Depression and WWII influenced her economic views. From the NYT:

In its announcement, the committee said: Ms. Ostrom "has challenged the conventional wisdom that common property is poorly managed and should be either regulated by central authorities or privatized. Based on numerous studies of user-managed fish stocks, pastures, woods, lakes, and groundwater basins, Ostrom concludes that the outcomes are, more often than not, better than predicted by standard theories."

KB investigated: The SEC is looking into possible accounting and disclosure violations at the L.A.-based homebuilder. KB mentioned the inquiry in a regulatory filing, but provided no details, other than it won't have a material effect on financials. (WSJ)

Foreclosures moving on up: About 30 percent of them involved homes in the top third of local housing values, up from 16 percent three years ago, according to Zillow.com. Home values in more expensive locales have fallen, leaving more homeowners with mortgages that exceed the value of their properties. (WSJ)

State tax revenues keep falling: The general fund numbers for the period ended Sept. 30 are $1.1 billion behind forecasts, opening yet another hole in the California budget. From Bloomberg:

[Controller John] Chiang said the state's latest figures show that Schwarzenegger and the Legislature must prepare for "more difficult decisions ahead." California was as also handed a defeat on Oct. 2 by the state's Supreme Court, which let stand a ruling that the governor and lawmakers illegally used $3.6 billion of money meant for local transportation agencies to balance the budget since 2007.

Initiative process under attack: This time Ronald George, chief justice of the California Supreme Court, is doing the attacking. He says the reliance on referendums has "rendered our state government dysfunctional." From the NYT:

"Much of this constitutional and statutory structure has been brought about not by legislative fact-gathering and deliberation, but rather by the approval of voter initiative measures, often funded by special interests. These interests are allowed under the law to pay a bounty to signature-gatherers for each signer. Frequent amendments -- coupled with the implicit threat of more in the future -- have rendered our state government dysfunctional, at least in times of severe economic decline."

New studios for Socal: The chairman of Long Beach Studios says he expects to sign a deal with Boeing today for a 77-acre site that had been used as a production facility. The development, which was announced a year ago but fell out of escrow in March, will include a bunch of soundstages and offices. (Press-Telegram)

Fox looking at Dobbs: But it'll take some doing to find the news in today's NYT piece on the news channel duking it out with the White House:

Fox continues to aggressively bolster its on-air talent, most recently with the hiring of John Stossel, the libertarian investigative journalist from ABC News, for its spin-off channel, Fox Business. The business channel is also keen on another administration critic, Lou Dobbs, who met for dinner with Mr. Ailes last month, according to two people with direct knowledge of the meeting.